JBI Human Rights

JBI Remembers Beijing: The Ferraro Factor

Geraldine A. Ferraro, who passed away this weekend, is a symbol of women’s rights advocacy.

As America’s first female candidate of a major party for vice-president, she broke barriers. But readers of IntLawGrrls may not know how actively and directly she influenced women’s rights issues in the international legal context as well.

Appalled by televised reports about the use of rape as a weapon of war by Serbs in the Bosnian conflict, Gerry contacted Madeleine Albright to ask what the new Clinton Administration was doing about it. She was immediately asked to join the Administration’s first delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, in February 1993, where she helped convince Member States to adopt a separate resolution addressing rape in war.

As Gerry told it, accomplishing this task required her to conduct gender-sensitivity training, too. For example, she found herself telling the male diplomats from the Islamic Conference that they needed to recognize that such sexual violence was not so much an insult to THEIR "honor" (which was all they were prepared to declare) but rather a very real lasting physical and psychological abuse of the women who were victimized. Gerry emphasized that something serious had to be done by the Commission to name it, stop it, punish the perpetrators and aid the survivors. As a result, the Commission adopted a resolution that called for "joint and separate action to end this despicable practice," as well as for investigations, accountability and assistance to the victims.

Later that year, the protection of women’s rights was affirmed as a major focus of the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna – only a few hundred miles from Bosnia itself.

JBI Welcomes Progress on Monitoring Iran, ‘Defamation of Religions’ at UN Human Rights Council

JBI congratulates US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the US delegation to the UN Human Rights Council for successfully pressing for the adoption of several positive measures by the Council at its recent session, which concluded Friday, March 25.  In a speech at the Council’s opening on February 28, Secretary Clinton pressed the Council to appoint a Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran and to move beyond its focus on “defamation of religions.” This week, following further active diplomacy by the US, the Council created the special post on Iran and, for the first time, refrained from adopting a “defamation of religions” resolution.  These changes follow the Council’s historic decision at a special session on February 25 to recommend that that the General Assembly suspend Libya’s membership on the Council in response to the Libyan authorities’ commission of gross and systematic violations of human rights. 

 

JBI Applauds Historic UN General Assembly Action Suspending Libya’s Membership in Human Rights Council

The Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) welcomes today’s historic consensus decision by the UN General Assembly to suspend Libya’s membership in the Human Rights Council.  Today’s vote is unprecedented; never before has a state’s membership in any UN human rights body been suspended. 

The resolution calling for Libya’s suspension was co-sponsored by more than 60 states that supplemented the original sponsors Botswana, Jordan, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Qatar.  In introducing the resolution, Lebanon emphasized that the General Assembly’s action is procedural, exceptional and temporary, and that the General Assembly may review and change its decision to suspend Libya’s membership in the Council at a later date, perhaps following a change in government.  Link to UNGA Resolution